Volodka gave her a blow on the ear and went off.

III

Elena Ivanovna and her little daughter visited the village on foot. They
were out for a walk. It was a Sunday, and the peasant women and girls
were walking up and down the street in their brightly-coloured dresses.
Rodion and Stepanida, sitting side by side at their door, bowed and
smiled to Elena Ivanovna and her little daughter as to acquaintances.
From the windows more than a dozen children stared at them; their faces
expressed amazement and curiosity, and they could be heard whispering:

"The Kutcherov lady has come! The Kutcherov lady!"

"Good-morning," said Elena Ivanovna, and she stopped; she paused, and
then asked: "Well, how are you getting on?"

"We get along all right, thank God," answered Rodion, speaking rapidly.
"To be sure we get along."

"The life we lead!" smiled Stepanida. "You can see our poverty
yourself, dear lady! The family is fourteen souls in all, and only two
bread-winners. We are supposed to be blacksmiths, but when they bring us
a horse to shoe we have no coal, nothing to buy it with. We are worried
to death, lady," she went on, and laughed. "Oh, oh, we are worried to
death."

Elena Ivanovna sat down at the entrance and, putting her arm round her
little girl, pondered something, and judging from the little girl's
expression, melancholy thoughts were straying through her mind, too; as